1. Technical Field
The present invention relates to a liquid discharge apparatus and a liquid discharge state detecting method.
2. Related Art
Technological improvements with regard to ink jet printers which are liquid discharge apparatuses are progressing and it is possible to record (print) in various formats with regard to various recording (printing) media. As a result, it is popular to use ink jet printers as medium scale printers for commercial applications which correspond to creating posters, signage, promotional materials, packaging, and the like and large scale printers for industrial application where the printers are built into product manufacturing lines. In accompaniment with this, greater reliability in these printers is demanded so that it is possible to stably perform high quality recording (printing) over a long period of time.
With regard to this, for example, an ink jet recording apparatus is described in Japanese Unexamined Patent Application Publication No. 2008-188840 which, with the object of it being possible to more efficiently maintain ink discharge characteristics, measures time elapsed since an operation of ejecting ink from a recording head, detects a recording head discharge state using a detecting means in a case where the elapsed time exceeds a threshold time interval, and performs a discharge head recovery operation using a recovery means when it is detected that there is a problem with the discharge state.
However, there is a problem in the ink jet recording apparatus described in Japanese Unexamined Patent Application Publication No. 2008-188840 in that, in checking of the discharge state which is performed in a case where the elapsed time exceeds the threshold time interval, there are cases where it is not possible to detect discharge abnormalities due to the timing with which the checking is carried out. In detail, even though a discharge abnormality is generated due to, for example, bubbles which are included in the discharge head (a cavity), there are cases such as where the bubbles which are the cause of the discharge abnormality dissipate or become a size which is less than the limit for detection in a brief period until the timing when a checking means performs checking and it is not possible to detect discharge abnormalities and the like. That is, there is a problem in that it is not possible to precisely detect the state of the discharge head when the period of time from when printing is stopped to the start of checking is long.